My New DIY Logo and Free Logo How-Tos

I’ve never been fully happy with the MyShingle logo – though I’ve never been quite sure of how to fix it so I just left it alone. But I decided it was time for a change. After all, let’s fact it, the .com logo is so last decade — no one ever refers to Facebook as Facebook.com. And even though my site still celebrates solos, for many readers, solo still has connotations of a one-man band rather than a state of mind as I’d intended. So returning to one of my earlier tag lines would correct that problem.

Still, I’ve had some bad logo experiences in the past. As I said, I’ve never really loved the logo I have now – and I’ve had dozens of others prepared that have never seen the light of day. Yet each time, even when working with a designer, I just couldn’t get the look I wanted. In fact, I grew so frustrated that I nearly breached my principles and considered using spec-work sites to generate a bunch of ideas for free just to see if any came close. But I didn’t go there.

Instead, I decided to try DIY. Bear in mind, I have no design skills and limited patience for figuring out new tools. But I knew what I wanted the end product to look like and it didn’t seem as if it should be difficult. Plus, I’d recently discovered a free graphics program called PicMonkey.com and creating a logo presented a good opportunity to give it a test drive. Because I’m impatient, I just dove right in and played around with PicMonkey until I figured it out (it’s very intuitive) – but you could also Google around for tutorials or take a look at the ones I found here, here and here.

In addition to logo creation, you can also use Picmonkey to change the colors on social media icons or create a banner for your blog. There’s even a photoshop feature that you can use to retouch your website photos. You can also meld an icon of your choosing on to a .jpg file of your name and create a logo that way. In fact, PicMonkey also handles many small tasks that a reliable virtual assistant can perform – or that you can procure quickly and inexpensively online for between $5 and $15 at sites like Fiverr and 99Design’s new Swift.ly (which isn’t spec work).

Granted, my self-designed logo isn’t high art. But for now, it works, it’s fast and it’s what I want – and that’s enough.

And your logo matters why?
Has anyone ever told you that they would read what you write but for the fact that they find your logo unsatisfying?
Has anyone ever told you that the reason they read what you write is that they find your logo captivating?

myshingle

I don’t know why it matters but the one I have bugs me.

Miguel Ángel

Great job! Simple, modern and pretty.

blawgher

Love your tagline!

JRK

just tried picmonkey. Amazing! Thanks!

http://www.pinkzebradesigns.com.au/ Troy Wilson

Picmonkey free online editor is very effective and easy to use. I tried it. Thanks to update us with so much great information